


the ghost of you

by adverbialstarlight



Series: voltron bingo stuff [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chinese Holidays, Chinese Keith (Voltron), Gen, Ghost Festival, His dad is still dead but technically he's still a main?, yeah I just did that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 09:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16093043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adverbialstarlight/pseuds/adverbialstarlight
Summary: It's Ghost Month, the time that the Chinese remember and celebrate friends and family who have died, and more specifically Ghost Day, the day when the spirits of the dead come back for a short while to the realm of the living. Keith, Krolia, and Kolivan are celebrating, honoring both Keith's dad and Krolia and Kolivan's fallen comrades.AKA I missed Ghost Month by like 2 weeks but it was the first thing to come to mind for the Ghost AU prompt for Voltron Bingo so I'm going to face the fandom and HC Keith Chinese for a minute





	the ghost of you

**Author's Note:**

> Ok a few things:  
> -this is my Ghost AU fill for Voltron Bingo because I interpreted the prompt weirdly  
> -I know Korean Keith is a big hc in here but I immediately thought of Ghost Festival which is Chinese and that's what I know about sooooo  
> -this is slightly more serious than my other fics but I always end up using a pop punk song from my iPod and MCR came up from the grave of my 7th grade emo phase and said hey use this so oops

Mid-August was approaching and the spirits had returned. Well, depending on how you looked at it, they had never left, but this was when they fully returned to this realm of existence. This time of year everyone was more mindful, the air was permanently smelling of burning joss paper and food that smelled heavenly. The streets were empty at night and the pools and lakes were empty and for these few weeks Keith relinquished his favorite red jacket so he would not attract a ghost.

Though spirituality was not as common in modern times and folklore was taken more as fairy tales than anything else, it was still Ghost Month– the time when all ghosts returned for a short while to the realm of the living. Offerings were set out and sticks of incense were burned, prayers were murmured and altars with pictures of those who were deceased were put up. It didn’t matter what a person’s beliefs were the rest of the year, for now those were unimportant and momentarily forgotten.

Keith and his mother were the same way. They cleaned their small home vigorously and spent the entire day creating a feast of all his father’s favorite dishes– pork dumplings, misua, tofu, and peking duck, mostly, though there was still an abundance of food– to set in front of an empty chair at meal time. They went to the temples and prayed, hoping that he was doing well in the afterlife. That everyone Keith and Krolia considered family who had died were doing well in the afterlife. He had not known some of them very well, Krolia had many fallen comrades, and even the ones that he’d met, their acquaintances were short lived.

He lightly touched a match to a stick of incense by a picture of his father now, careful not to knock over the glass of wine also sitting atop the altar. Keith had never been very into things live this– spirits and ghosts and divine powers– but right now he couldn’t help but want to. To convince himself that his father was here right now, enjoying the carefully pleated dumplings and the presence of his wife and son before he had to return back down below.

The altar was small, most of it being taken up by candles, incense, and carefully and cleanly cut fruit that Keith had spent a painstaking two hour chopping. Maybe his father was not here. Maybe he was. Either way, it had to be perfect for him.

This was a time for honoring and remembering the dead, and nothing could be half assed if Keith were to do it correctly. It was the leas that he could do for his father, and Krolia seemed to have the same idea. She set down the bundle of white flowers atop the altar and silently came up to stand beside Keith, touching his arm lightly.

To the right of his father’s altar was one dedicated to Keith’s other family, Krolia’s. The small photographs of Thace, Ulaz, Antok, and a few other men Keith did not recognize were almost piled atop each other because of the small space on the table, propped up against an orange. Kolivan stood in front of it in silence, his eyes closed and head tilted down so strands of long dark hair slid from behind his ear and in front of his eye.

Some had been gone for years, like Keith's father, but some had died within the past year like Thace. The amount of time that had passed didn't make any of their deaths hurt any less though.

Right now his father should have been approaching fifty but he was going to be stuck at thirty nine forever, leaving his wife and son alone. Many of Kolivan's friends were even younger, Regris had been about nineteen when he'd died on a mission with Keith and Kolivan, and worse, there were so many of them. Picture after picture, oriental knife after knife placed on the card table for each fallen comrade.

He did like the idea that they were all here now, that they could see how much they were missed. That as ghosts they were enjoying Keith and Krolia’s careful cooking and would be able to exist peacefully because of all the offerings burned for them tonight. They had all meant so much to Keith when they were here, and they deserved the best possible afterlife.

Krolia extended her free hand to lightly touch the framed photo of her deceased husband.

It was the same portrait still hanging somewhere in the fire station, the captain in his uniform, smiling somewhere behind the camera so brightly the crows feet around his eyes were visible even in the old, slightly grainy picture. His pale skin looked almost ashen and his brown hair seemed colorless in the undersaturated lighting of the room it had been taken in, and somehow he still looked so alive.

“He’d be so proud of you now, you know that right?” Krolia asked quietly. “He was such a good man, they all were…”

Her eyes went off to a far away, somber place, and Keith looked away. After making sure all of their pictures were positioned immaculately, he picked up the two small paper lanterns that he had made with his mother and Kolivan earlier, as well as two more unlit incense.

The dark purple one shaped into something resembling a lotus flower he haded to Kolivan, as well as one of the incense. Kolivan took it with a nod and dropped in a small piece of red tissue paper. And then he dipped the incense stick into the white candle flickering closest to the picture of Ulaz, letting the stick burn a moment before moving to light the center of the lantern.

Krolia did the same with the dark mauve lantern that Keith had decorated with small patterns in black ink, and after he dropped his own paper in they let the two lanterns catch in the wind and lazily begin to rise, following the path of several neighbors’ northeast.

Keith sat down on the steps and watched the lanterns blend into the large group illuminating the night sky. Even after years of doing this, it was still stunning.

Tonight his entire family was here, and though he might not believe entirely in ghosts or the realms, his father was still here with him now. Here, eating his baozi before they were cool enough, here, seeing his wife again and falling in love with her all over again in one night, and here, sitting on the stair of their front porch with Keith.

“ _Zhongyuan jie kuaile_ , Baba,” he whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, so sorry for that title it seems to be a bad habit for shit I write that's both already posted on here and still a WIP. I am also kind of terrified because I dared to HC him from another place in East Asia but what are you going to do about it I am Chinese and the holiday is Chinese so fight me it's a HC let me live. Anyway wow this was so short this is I feel like it should be longer because I only know novel length/pacing?? That's why it kind of sucked ~~and I wrote most of this really sleep deprived in the middle of the night and didn't really proof read it but that's irrelevant~~ but I hope it was alright anyway. Thanks for reading!
> 
> catch me on [tumblr](adverbialstarlight.tumblr.com) where I post messy unorganized fandom shit if ya want


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